The cry of Home Rule was welcomed in Ireland by her Catholic masses; at the General Election of 1874, sixty men were returned to the House of Commons to support this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in essential strength. Butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on three or four occasions; but the question was not discussed with the fulness of knowledge and the breadth of view it certainly required; on the whole, it was superficially treated. Neither Butt nor his opponents thoroughly perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the Union, for if the Imperial Parliament was, nominally, to be left intact, a real Parliament was to be placed in its stead, in Ireland, which would practically annul its effective authority, from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; and they seem not to have understood that 'Irish Federalism' implied Federalism for Great Britain to a great extent, and introduced into the Constitution the Federal principle with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. Butt's scheme, however, was powerfully attacked in its details; by no one so powerfully as by Mr. Gladstone, who had lately announced, to an approving multitude, that Home Rule was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly asked, 'Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the country to which we belong?'[21] Little knowing what the future was to bring forth, Mr. Gladstone declared that Home Rule was not to be even thought of, until it could be proved that the Irish affairs, to which the Irish Parliament was to be confined, could be separated from Imperial and British affairs, a partition he evidently deemed impossible; and he insisted that the introduction of Irish members into the Imperial Parliament, which, according to this plan, was to have nothing to do with Ireland, was not only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that these men 'were to judge as they might think fit of the general affairs of the Empire, and also of exclusively English and Scotch questions,' an interpretation not, I believe, correct. Home Rule was rejected by overwhelming majorities in the Parliament of 1874-80; and at the General Election of the last-named year, it found no countenance, I have said, in England or Scotland. The subject was scarcely referred to by Mr. Gladstone, wholly preoccupied by his Midlothian campaign, and by his persistent efforts to deprive Lord Beaconsfield of power.